On Media

Vargas to AP, NYT: End 'illegal immigrant'

Journalist Jose Antonio Vargas on Friday issued a challenge to news organizations to stop using the term "illegal immigrant" — and his first targets are The Associated Press and The New York Times.

After giving Friday’s keynote address at the 2012 Online News Association Conference in San Francisco, Vargas spoke with POLITICO and followed-up on his comments that he and his non-profit group Define American would focus on getting the media to stop using what he deems an inflammatory and inaccurate phrase.

Vargas, who made waves in 2011 with his New York Times magazine essay "My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant," said his first step to stop the media from using the term "illegal immigrant" will be to meet with the individuals in charge of each news organization’s style and encourage them to use "undocumented" instead, or to explore other alternatives.

“[I’m going to] sit down with the people at the AP, specifically the standards people, the people that run the stylebook,” he said. “And I have started and will continue communicating with Margaret Sullivan, the new ombudswoman, the New York Times public editor, who is, like, amazing. I think she’s doing a really, really good job. She seems open. So getting the New York Times and the AP is kind of the first target right now.”

Vargas also addressed the issue in a Time magazine column published Friday, writing that "when journalists, who are supposed to seek neutrality and fairness, use the term, they are politicizing an already political issue." He also pointed out that several news organizations such as The Miami Herald, The Huffington Post and the San Antonio Express-News have changed their policies in recent years to specify that their reporters use “undocumented immigrant” in stories.

Vargas said while he’s starting with the AP and the New York Times, his non-profit will also mount a social media campaign to get readers to target their local media organizations.

“This is also a grassroots local issue. To me, the people who read the local community newspapers, watch the local television shows and listen to local radio, how do we get them to actually think about the word that they’re using? How do we leverage the Internet and social media, and how do we ask local people to talk to their local communities? This is not just about the big organizations like the AP and the New York Times, this is also about local papers and local TV stations and local radio,” he told POLITICO.

“It has to be readers talking to their news organizations,” Vargas added. “It can’t just be top down, you know, some guy named Jose Antonio Vargas doing this. It’s more, how do we get people in their own communities to really challenge this?”

“Illegal immigrant” had been the preferred term at AP. It ceased being the preferred term last year.

Though the term is in the AP Stylebook because it reflects a legal reality, we believe there are alternatives. AP reporters understand that it’s not the only way to refer to individuals in a host of different circumstances.

In the case of a person brought here as a child without permission, the term can be misleading, since the person wasn’t a willing “immigrant” at all. In such a case, AP reporters might simply state the situation: He doesn’t have legal permission to live in the United States, since his parents entered the country illegally (or without authorization).